Meeting his Queen
by thelasteddis
Summary: Relius meets the new queen of Attolia; not under the best of circumstances.


**Once again, this isn't new; I'm just shifting copies of my other fics onto so I'll have two copies. Thanks to tearoha for betaing, I'm sorry I took so long to get around to rewriting! Dedicated to tiegirl . In other notes: 1) the Shannon Hale running joke swipe is intentional. 2) Baron Lysander (I renamed him because apparently his former name (Leonidas) was the same as a character from 300, which caused confusion for my marvelous beta) is in league with Maleveras (QoA boat cover pg. 208, he was a traitor in the early years of Attolia's reign). 3) The younger guard is Teleus.**

Meeting His Queen

Relius had been hiding behind a wagon, in the mud, for hours.

Relius didn't particularly like mud. But this would be worth it. He needed to see the queen; maybe it was silly of him, but he felt as though if he saw her he could know what was in store for Attolia. If she was weak, he could brace himself for the worst. If she was strong… he could hope.  
So he had crept behind the wagon early this morning to wait for her, hoping with all his might that no one would decide to search the grounds again before the queen arrived at Baron Lysander's door. Relius had no doubts about how a scrawny, muddy boy spying on the queen would be received.

There was a clattering sound of wagon wheels, and a gilded carriage pulled into the courtyard. Relius leaned forward. A guard, one of many that made up the queen's escort, pulled the carriage curtain aside. The queen stepped into the sunlight, and carpet was rolled before her to keep her feet out of the mud.

Relius wasn't impressed. The queen was too tall to be dainty and too young to be majestic. She was painfully thin and her eyes were shadowed. Disappointed, Relius sat back in the mud – onto a plank of wood that promptly broke with a resounding _crack!_

"What was that?"

"Over there!"

Before Relius could think of escape, five of the queen's broad-shouldered guards had surrounded him, spears pointing at his neck. He sat very still.

A more heavily armored guard walked towards Relius. The man glared down at him from the depths of a bronze helmet. "Stand up," the man ordered. Relius stood, as quickly as he could while trying to look tall and disdainful.

"What's your name, boy?"

He glared at the guard for just a moment. "Relius."

"Just Relius?"

"Yes. Just Relius." It always came back to that. No family name, no father who wanted to be associated with him, no respect.

"Who ordered you here? Who's your master?"

"No one."

"No one." The guard didn't believe him. Relius wanted to tell him that he sounded like a bird that had been trained to repeat short phrases.

"Timoleon?" It was the queen speaking, still standing by the stairway to the villa, surrounded by a small army of guards.

"He was spying, your majesty," the guard, Timoleon, replied. "He won't tell us who ordered him here."

An inexplicable daring seized Relius, and he spoke directly to the queen. "Your majesty," he began, his mouth dry. "No one told me to come here. I wanted to. I wanted to see the new queen of Attolia."

The queen raised an eyebrow. It occurred to Relius that it would be difficult to leave this conversation with his neck intact. His formerly low opinion of the queen was rising. Standing before her, the target of her dark glare, Relius had a niggling fear that he had judged her too soon.

"Your majesty," he began. "I mean no disrespect. But I think… I think I can help you."

The eyebrow rose higher still.

"You see," he continued, talking a little faster while he had her attention. "I could find out about your enemies, I could spy for you. Your barons don't tell their queen everything. For example," he said, throwing caution to the winds, "Baron Lysander has been talking with your other barons. Through private messengers, ones that do not pass through the messenger stations on the roads. I don't know what the messages say."

"I do," the queen said, to his surprise. "But I don't have any conclusive proof. Tell me, Relius. Could you get me some?"

"Yes, your majesty. Or, I think I could."

"Good. We are leaving this evening, you are coming with us. Timoleon?" the guard, who Relius assumed must be the captain, stepped forward. "See that that happens." Without looking at Relius again, Attolia swept down the carpet and disappeared into the baron's villa, another small army of guards detaching themselves from the knot around Relius and following her. Relius was left staring after her, wondering if he had really offered to the help the queen, and if she really had accepted it. He thought she had.

Timoleon, meanwhile, had been left behind by his queen, and was not happy about it. He gestured for one of the younger guards to take over, and hurried after Attolia.

The unlucky guard who had inherited Relius stood still as a post for a count of two (no doubt terrified and elated that the captain had acknowledged him, Relius thought), then rose to the occasion and asked Relius, "Is there anything you want to take with you?"

"Nothing at all."

"Ah. We should just wait here, then?" Relius nodded. He sat on a low wall by the road, while the guard rejoined his fellows nearby, where he could keep an eye on Relius.

Relius didn't care about that. He had other things on his mind. Serving the queen would be dangerous, he knew. It was probable that he'd end his life chained to a wall, by a usurper or by Attolia herself. But if he played the few cards available to him well, there were years of power between now and then. And of course there was the queen herself; something about her had far exceeded his expectations. She was a clever woman, but so much more than that. Relius, who had thought of nothing but saving his neck as he faced the queen, looked back on the memory of her eyes, smooth and dark like obsidian and shining with intelligence only recently allowed to break to the surface.

He smiled.


End file.
